AliveCor unveils an AI stroke prevention platform, inks $30 million from Omron and the Mayo Clinic

Medtech startup AliveCor announced this morning it has pulled in $30 million from Omron Healthcare and the Mayo Clinic and is launching an artificially intelligent stroke prevention platform for doctors called KardiaPro.

AliveCor already has an FDA-cleared mobile app called Kardia to accompany its $99 standalone EKG reader device. However, a partnership last year with the Mayo Clinic involving 4,500 patients for a major study on stroke prompted the company to build the new platform, which is a premium offering for doctors who want to monitor the EKG readouts of patients at potential risk for stroke or other heart-related diseases.

KardiaPro will track a number of factors for at-risk patients, including weight, activity and blood pressure and then runs them through the AliveCor AI technology to suss out potential triggers doctors may not detect on their own. The platform then feeds what AliveCor CEO Vic Gundotra refers to as a “personal heart profile” for patients that can then be used to send alerts to the doctor to help them determine the next course of action.

AliveCor raised $13.5 million previously from Khosla Ventures, Qualcomm and Burrill and Company. The new funding now brings the total up to $45.4 million. But the more important part of this announcement is the deep partnership AliveCor has forged with major health outfits, which combined have served millions of patients and can provide millions of more points of data for research. Omron, in particular, could be useful down the road as it is a major creator and distributor of blood pressure monitoring products in the healthcare industry.

Heart disease is the number one cause of death in the world and blood pressure monitoring and EKG test results are critical to early detection and successful management of hypertension and stroke risk. KardiaPro’s AI component could help doctors detect an oncoming stroke by alerting them to an irregular EKG reading seconds after patients tests themselves.

The new KardiaPro platform is the latest from AliveCor, which also unveiled AliveCor’s Kardia band, a new EKG band for Apple Watch that has launched in Europe and is waiting for FDA clearance in the U.S.